87 Clockers

Ichinose, a violin music student, is coming towards a crossroads in his life. He has to decide what to do with his future, but he doesn't feel pulled towards any one particular dream. In the absence of any ambition, he decides to work alongside his mother, who is a piano teacher, and teach violin. But one night, he sees a pretty, sad girl standing barefoot outside an apartment. A little investigation shows that she seems to share the apartment with a cat and a mysterious guy called Mike. Will meeting her be the trigger that can change his dull life?

91 Comments

Nevertheless, there are at least 3 occasions I can think of where it is strongly implied N & C had sex.

Wah, there is an one more scene. In chapter 101 (in Paris again) when Nodame was coming back from shopping, she overheard the conversation between Chiaki and a guy, who had come to tune up Chiaki's piano. She's shocked to know Chiaki was going to move out his apartment, but Chiaki explained everything and they got reconciled. Then the next frame is the piano tuner. He pondered, and then started playing piano. Chiaki rushed our from the bedroom, being red with embarrassment. His shirt was half unbuttoned and only half was tucked into pants. And it looked like rest was buttoned on wrong hole. They forgot the guy was there.

The answer is...YES! And quite a bit more. But Ninomiya is perhaps unusual in that she allows her characters to do their personal business without spectators watching. Nevertheless, there are at least 3 occasions I can think of where it is strongly implied N & C had sex. 1) After Nodame's recital at the chapel. 2) A scene where they are sitting around a table and Chiaki suddenly makes a move on her. In the next panel they are sitting in chairs and an unspecified amount of time has passed. This is the most explicit example. 3) There is a scene where Chiaki wipes natto off Nodame's lips. If that doesn't imply regular physical intimacy, I don't know what would. All of these scenes were after they went to Paris.

But having said that, I think the notion that K & H will go all kissy-face in the next chapter seems unlikely, even off-screen. (Though I haven't been able to read it yet as I mentioned in an earlier post, so I don't know much more than most people on this forum.)

wow.... that girl is really heartless.... why would she hates someone who loves her and like someone who doesnt even care about her?... if i was the protagonist, i will really go for julia and abandoned her... if she really does not like him because he was fat, she should told him when they were a child... damn this girl making my blood boil

Well, this may seem to be turning around completely from what I said just a minute ago, but . . . he worships her but arguably he doesn't actually love her. He barely knows her. He didn't even know she did overclocking. And from her perspective he's this annoying rich kid and, while he himself doesn't actually flaunt the wealth, seems like both her parents and maybe his are all over her rubbing her nose in his status and how she better go out with/marry him because he's the town heir. "Fuck you" is IMO a perfectly reasonable response to that. It isn't her turning him down that bothers me, it's how she handled it.

And while it's in a way very cool and impressive that he totally transformed himself, becoming a widely travelled hard-working self-starter with his own company all just for her . . . at the same time it just underlines that he has no direction of his own. Mike by contrast, while he's completely self-absorbed to the point of being a bastard, is also utterly driven by his own personal passion; he's a force. I can see being attracted to that. It is perhaps unfortunate for our hero that he's more like the rich lad than he is like Mike.

Why do that to a man! She just made fun of him every time instead of just saying that she didn't like him. I mean what the fuck man. He's a good dude! Just tell him! Instead he's spent his whole life doing things and then getting made fun of after!

Why do that to a man! She just made fun of him every time instead of just saying that she didn't like him. I mean what the fuck man. He's a good dude! Just tell him! Instead he's spent his whole life doing things and then getting made fun of after!

I think I figured out what CPU there using in chapter 28, not that it really matters, but it should be the Intel Celeron (Sandy Bridge). It took some guessing to figure that this chapter was release in 2012 in Japan and the only CPU where 6.8 MHz would be record breaking is the Celeron.

Chapter 28 was originally published in the May 2014 issue of JumpX, which was released in early April. You could still be right, though, because Ninomiya would have been planning this chapter long before that.

wow.... that girl is really heartless.... why would she hates someone who loves her and like someone who doesnt even care about her?... if i was the protagonist, i will really go for julia and abandoned her... if she really does not like him because he was fat, she should told him when they were a child... damn this girl making my blood boil

I think I figured out what CPU there using in chapter 28, not that it really matters, but it should be the Intel Celeron (Sandy Bridge). It took some guessing to figure that this chapter was release in 2012 in Japan and the only CPU where 6.8 MHz would be record breaking is the Celeron.

That's... I don't want to say stupid. I didn't like that she allowed Mike to boss her around, and the backbone she's displaying is impressing. She's in her right not to like a guy, and to reject him, no matter how much he works to "make himself worthy" (which is backwards as fuck), and specially because he's not thinking about her feelings at all.

Well, she has all the right to like or dislike whomever she wants, but she has to be proper in conveying her feelings to the person. If you point out single specific points you dont like, the message passing on is "if it werent for this..."

Shes not a bitch becase she doesnt like him, it's because she never explained she doesnt like him. All she does is to humiliate him -just after he made some herculean effort to improve himself and raise his worth- and raising the bar higher.

Even as translator for this project, I haven't been able to read any chapters beyond the end of Vol 5 (ch. 29), so you guys are just about caught up with me. I have been able to read some chapter synopses and see some of the art (on a Chinese site) and it is definitely tacking back towards heavy overclocking. But it's a kind of overclocking that is only about a year old (based on an actual even that the managaka attended last Dec.), so contemporary overclockers may find it more interesting than some of the earlier events.

There is also a two-chapter backstory on Mike which might give us some insight into why he behaves the way he does. (I'm not being coy: I've seen the art but I don't read Chinese, so I don't know at all, but it looks rather intriguing.)

What I mainly take away from this monumental vol. 5 is that it isn't going to end any time soon. Beyond that, I also enjoy that Hana is not merely a beautiful tech savvy dream girl but in fact has some serious issues of her own. Ninomiya is great about giving us female characters with real depth, which to me seems unusual in a manga billed as seinen. How Hana works through her issues, and whether that drives her back towards Mike, towards Kanade, or in some other direction gives Ninomiya lots of material to work with.

That's... I don't want to say stupid. I didn't like that she allowed Mike to boss her around, and the backbone she's displaying is impressing. She's in her right not to like a guy, and to reject him, no matter how much he works to "make himself worthy" (which is backwards as fuck), and specially because he's not thinking about her feelings at all.

I'd be a lot more on side with that if she'd just said "Look, I don't like you." But she kept harshly running down different aspects of his existence instead, which is kind of mean and at the same time makes it not so unreasonable for him to think "Well, if she doesn't like X about me which is not intrinsic, then if I changed X maybe I'd have a chance." Clueless, yes, but when you're in love hope tends to spring eternal. It's not like he spent a bunch of time harassing her or anything.

Urgh, how much literal abuse Hana's willing to take from Mike is making me feel sick, especially when he's so completely self-absorbed that he can't even comprehend how utterly he relies on her, both in life and in overclocking.

Spoiler

Hana, it's not that he doesn't look at you as a girl, it's that he doesn't even see you as human. I've got a really bad feeling that he's going to crash as a direct result of his own idiocy, learn some stupidly minimal life lesson that doesn't make him any less of a sack of garbage, and Hana's going to go back to killing herself to support him out of a mixture of pity and stockholm syndrome, because her other option is her family forcing her into marrying a creepy rich stalker. If she gets a crappy ending like that, I feel like I'll really regret having read this manga.

I'm not particularly invested in Kanade, but at least he isn't a complete piece of shit, y'know? He even thinks seriously about his life and his actions. I don't really care if he gets together with Hana in the end, but if he can help her value herself more, and start to expand her own options, then at least he won't have been entirely superfluous as a protagonist. Hell, he actually seems sturdy enough as a person that, even if his little love story doesn't work out, I don't think it'll be bitter or unsatisfying. I like that in a character.

Yea... It's ok finding him a creepy and not liking him, but she could be more nice to him and have a proper talk. Poor guy made a lot of effort for her, she could at least show some respect for that. And she liking Mike is just dumb :/

I just don't like any pairing anymore, everyone is either extremely selfish, or extremely dumb for a selfish person >_>.

And did she even ask him doing it for her? No! He did it for himself. To obtain a prize. And why she has to admire a stalker? Actually, her admiring something in him would give him probably a wrong impression that he should double his efforts or something. It's actually hilarious to what extend the guy can't understand NO.

Yea... It's ok finding him a creepy and not liking him, but she could be more nice to him and have a proper talk. Poor guy made a lot of effort for her, she could at least show some respect for that. And she liking Mike is just dumb :/

I just don't like any pairing anymore, everyone is either extremely selfish, or extremely dumb for a selfish person >_>.

That's... I don't want to say stupid. I didn't like that she allowed Mike to boss her around, and the backbone she's displaying is impressing. She's in her right not to like a guy, and to reject him, no matter how much he works to "make himself worthy" (which is backwards as fuck), and specially because he's not thinking about her feelings at all.